Religion, Mass Violence, and Illiberal Regimes: Recent Research on the Rohingya in Myanmar

The plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar has drawn considerable international attention in recent years but a solution to the crisis remains elusive. This article gathers pertinent research from key books on Myanmar's politics and society published during the last five years and synthesizes their contributions to our understanding of the issue. It argues that the picture emerging from these works highlights how legal infrastructure for dealing with mass violence fails to deal adequately with the realities of an illiberal state. It further shows how the conflict's religious dimension - amplified through public discourse - obscures a competition between historically oppressed peoples to be heard. Rather than a conflict between Buddhists and Muslims, the nested dynamics of Rakhine State's regional politics shaped a situation where minorities turn on other minorities. This critical reading of the issue thus implies that international intervention in the form of labeling victims to save and perpetrators to sanction would likely be unproductive.

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The Nine Cancer Frames: A Tool to Facilitate Critical Reading of Cancer-Related Information

Journal of Cancer Education ◽

10.1007/s13187-021-02062-7 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Craig Murray ◽

Nina von Possel ◽

Hanne C. Lie ◽

Jarle Breivik

Keyword(s):

Health Communication ◽

Public Discourse ◽

Analytical Tool ◽

Public Understanding ◽

Factual Knowledge ◽

Critical Reading ◽

Framing Analysis ◽

Cancer Communication ◽

Related Information ◽

Cancer Literacy

AbstractPeople’s ability to critically assess cancer-related information is essential from a preventional and therapeutic, as well as a general democratic perspective. Such cancer literacy is not just about acquiring factual knowledge. It also involves the ability to analyze how the information is contextualized—how cancer is framed. Previous research concerning the framing of cancer in public discourse is voluminous and penetrating but also fragmented and inaccessible to non-experts. In this study, we have developed an integrated and applicable tool for analyzing cancer discourse by systematically classifying distinctive ways of framing of the concept of cancer. Building on previous research and an inductive framing analysis of a broad range of public cancer discourse, systematically selected from British and Norwegian newspapers, we have characterized nine cancer frames: the biomedical, the environmental, the epidemiological, the personal, the sociopolitical, the economic, the antagonistic, the alternative, and the symbolic frame. This framing scheme may be applied to analyze cancer-related discourse across a plurality of themes and contexts. We also show how different frames combine to produce more complex messages, thereby revealing underlying patterns, strategies, and conflicts in cancer communication. In conclusion, this analytical tool enables critical reading of cancer-related information and may be especially useful in educational initiatives to advance health communication and public understanding of cancer.

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Food for social change in Peru: Narrative and performance of the culinary nation

The Sociological Review ◽

10.1177/00380261211008802 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 69 (3) ◽

pp. 520-537

Author(s):

Raúl Matta

Keyword(s):

Social Change ◽

Cultural Identity ◽

Indigenous People ◽

Public Discourse ◽

Media Content ◽

Critical Reading ◽

Food Cultures ◽

Societal Changes ◽

And Performance

This article discusses the most relevant scholarship produced on the rise of Peruvian cuisine and Peru’s gastro-politics. It focuses on the contexts, processes and protagonists behind the attempt to heal and re-found the nation through food after a period of decline and terror, and on the formulation of ideas of social change aimed at shaping and promoting Peru as an entrepreneurial, vigorous but also more equal and fairer society. It also considers the smaller societal changes that nurtured these ideas, which are varied in nature and scope. Methodologically, the article explores the semantics, practices and ideologies at stake as expressed in public discourse, media content, gastronomic trends and restaurant sourcing. By unfolding central processes of the culinary project: high-end cuisine, the refiguring of indigenous people as producers and the use of cultural identity as an authenticating force, it offers a critical reading of the so-called gastronomic revolution, highlighting the ways in which claims to unity and reconciliation, particularly in the incorporation of indigenous people and their food cultures, smooth over ongoing inequalities.

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Activism in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Struggles against Dual Hegemony and the Emergence of “Local First”

East European Politics and Societies and Cultures ◽

10.1177/0888325418767505 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 33 (1) ◽

pp. 135-156

Author(s):

Randall Puljek-Shank ◽

Felix Fritsch

Keyword(s):

Social Justice ◽

Civil Society ◽

Service Provision ◽

Public Discourse ◽

Local Scale ◽

Political Strategies ◽

Dual Nature ◽

International Intervention ◽

Political Actors ◽

Central Focus

The 2014 protests and plenums in Bosnia-Herzegovina were widely noted for their insertion of economic and social justice topics into the stale public discourse of ethnocracy. They also signified a potential to break with an anemic civil society shaped by international intervention, technocratic “project logic” and apolitical service provision. This article argues for treating these struggles in reference to the dual nature of the hegemony created by both local ethnonationalists and international liberal intervenors. It applies a Gramscian perspective to the processes by which hegemony is created and (re)produced via consensus in civil society. The challenge to dual hegemony can be seen in the central focus of contestation on social justice in economic arrangements as well as in the alternative logics of engagement and organizational forms in society. We describe the tensions arising from this dual challenge in terms of the degree to which they contest or reproduce the predominant anti-politics, a stance of distancing from dialogue or even contact with political actors and institutions. We conclude that the events during and since 2014 have strengthened the means to build an alternative third bloc via a “local first” approach, containing heterogeneous forms of local-scale action with explicitly political strategies.

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The Pacific Northwest Forest Debate: Bringing Religion Back In?1

Worldviews Global Religions Culture and Ecology ◽

10.1163/156853599x00027 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 3-32

Author(s):

Samuel C. Porter

Keyword(s):

Pacific Northwest ◽

Public Discourse ◽

Political Liberalism ◽

Forest Policy ◽

Fundamental Principle ◽

Drop Out ◽

Institutional Dynamics ◽

Public Square ◽

Religious Dimension ◽

Religiously Based

AbstractThis paper puts into relief the religious dimension of the fierce fight over the federal forests in Oregon. My purpose is to describe and comment on some of the religiously based normative pictures that underlie the institutional dynamics of the dispute. Oregon's religious contours are sketched as backdrop. Strands of civil religion Oregon style are teased out. Oregon Lutheran and Catholic visions are examined. Based on field observations, interviews and analysis of public documents, the essay finds a vital, though marginalised, religious dimension to the debate. Yet, moral vocabularies of a religious nature, evident in the personal convictions of forest debate participants, tend to drop out in public discourse, especially at the level of policy. While preserving the Enlightenment critique of religion, I argue, religion should be brought back in to the public square to give voice to religious persons and groups. Citizens and national forest policy makers must create the conditions in which religious voices are heard along with biological and economic ones. Not doing so violates a fundamental principle of political liberalism: inclusion. Suggestions are made as to how public debates, which include religious voices, might proceed.

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Konceptuel imperialisme og engageret sympati i forskning om kvindelige sexsælgere

Kvinder Køn & Forskning ◽

10.7146/kkf.v25i2-3.97075 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Jeanett Bjønness

Keyword(s):

Life History ◽

Everyday Life ◽

Knowledge Production ◽

Public Discourse ◽

Research Process ◽

Ethnographic Research ◽

Critical Reading ◽

Academic Knowledge ◽

Female Sex

Conceptual imperialism and engaged sympathy in research on female sex-sellers: This paper investigates academic knowledge production on sex-sellers’ everyday life and strategies. Methodological discussions are first contextualized in public discourse on prostitution in Denmark characterized by a highly polarized debate often opposing ‘the victim’ to ‘the autonomous individual’ and second in the researcher’s autobiography. The paper discusses how the researcher’s ownclassed and gendered experiences affect the ethnographic research process. Does attempted identification with informants sometimes obscure valuable knowledge? Does it even sometimes lead to unintended kinds of ‘othering’ or ‘epistemological imperialism’? The paper builds on data from long term fieldwork in a drop-in center for marginalized Danish women, life history interviews, and a critical reading of contemporary debates on prostitution in Denmark.

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Shifting Identities, Policy Networks, and the Practical and Ethical Challenges of Gaining Access to the Field in Interventions

Doing Fieldwork in Areas of International Intervention ◽

10.1332/policypress/9781529206883.003.0002 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 23-36

Author(s):

Roland Kostić

Keyword(s):

Policy Networks ◽

Ethical Challenges ◽

Mass Violence ◽

International Intervention ◽

Elite Networks ◽

Interview Situation ◽

Expert Interview ◽

Access To The Field ◽

Shifting Identities

This chapter explains interviews as an illustrative example of the effects that a violent or illiberal context can have on how informants or interviewees are accessed. It points out that what is shared in an interview is influenced in particular ways by certain contexts and on meta-data in interviews about war and mass violence. The chapter focuses on Roland Kostić, who shows how interviewing intervention elites brings about its own series of challenges and dilemmas. It discusses Kostić's interview-based research with international intervention elites in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It also shows how long-term research is crucial for opening the door to elite networks in a way that has allowed for behind-the-scene insights and information that are far beyond a formal expert interview situation.

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Violence begetting violence: An examination of extremist content on deep Web social networks

First Monday ◽

10.5210/fm.v25i3.10421 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Simon Malevich ◽

Tom Robertson

Keyword(s):

Social Networks ◽

Social Media ◽

Public Discourse ◽

Significant Rise ◽

Deep Web ◽

Terrorist Attacks ◽

Mass Violence ◽

Web Social

Several incidents of mass violence in 2019 were preceded by manifestoes posted to deep Web social media sites by their perpetrators. These sites, most notably 4chan and 8chan, are buried in the deep Web, away from the neutralizing effects of broad public discourse. Many of the posts to these sites reference earlier extremist incidents, and indeed the incidents themselves mimic aspects of previous attacks. Building on previous research, this paper examines these deep Web social media sites. Through an analysis of traffic and posts, we confirm that these sites often act as a self-reinforcing community of users encouraging each other to violence, and we map a statistically significant rise in ”post volume” on these sites immediately following terrorist attacks.

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Ubiquinone-BODIPY nanoparticles for tumor redox-responsive fluorescence imaging and photodynamic activity

Journal of Materials Chemistry B ◽

10.1039/d0tb02529a ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Byunghee Hwang ◽

Tae-Il Kim ◽

Hyunjin Kim ◽

Sungjin Jeon ◽

Yongdoo Choi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Fluorescence Imaging ◽

Selective Activation ◽

Turn On ◽

Intracellular Environment ◽

Redox Responsive ◽

Photodynamic Activity

A ubiquinone-BODIPY photosensitizer self-assembles into nanoparticles (PS-Q-NPs) and undergoes selective activation within the highly reductive intracellular environment of tumors, resulting in “turn-on” fluorescence and photosensitizing activities.

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